All ADM Discussions Tagged 'social' - Automotive Digital Marketing2017-09-26T21:55:55Zhttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=social&feed=yes&xn_auth=noHow #YouTube and #Pinterest Can Boost Your Online Salestag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2015-03-28:1970539:Topic:5809472015-03-28T15:09:37.133ZJon Floydhttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/automotivedirectmarketing
<p><a href="http://api.ning.com:80/files/3NiB4LFE7cW5MQZZ4aoVOn5pGBWGwm-0uoWvOEbhUEDt3QsCPA9XlT-j-GoVO24g1tz009SJ8PxR7LXbGX7Nbo869oFFN5Lk/internetmarketingboard6.jpg" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://api.ning.com:80/files/3NiB4LFE7cW5MQZZ4aoVOn5pGBWGwm-0uoWvOEbhUEDt3QsCPA9XlT-j-GoVO24g1tz009SJ8PxR7LXbGX7Nbo869oFFN5Lk/internetmarketingboard6.jpg?width=750" width="750"></img></a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-youtube-pinterest-can-boost-your-online-sales-jon-floyd?trk=mp-author-card" target="_blank">How #YouTube and #Pinterest Can Boost Your Online Sales</a></p>
<p>Are you using <strong>YouTube</strong> and <strong>Pinterest</strong> to promote your online…</p>
<p><a href="http://api.ning.com:80/files/3NiB4LFE7cW5MQZZ4aoVOn5pGBWGwm-0uoWvOEbhUEDt3QsCPA9XlT-j-GoVO24g1tz009SJ8PxR7LXbGX7Nbo869oFFN5Lk/internetmarketingboard6.jpg" target="_self"><img width="750" class="align-left" src="http://api.ning.com:80/files/3NiB4LFE7cW5MQZZ4aoVOn5pGBWGwm-0uoWvOEbhUEDt3QsCPA9XlT-j-GoVO24g1tz009SJ8PxR7LXbGX7Nbo869oFFN5Lk/internetmarketingboard6.jpg?width=750"/></a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-youtube-pinterest-can-boost-your-online-sales-jon-floyd?trk=mp-author-card" target="_blank">How #YouTube and #Pinterest Can Boost Your Online Sales</a></p>
<p>Are you using <strong>YouTube</strong> and <strong>Pinterest</strong> to promote your online business? If not, then you are missing out on some very easy traffic. Both of these sites have the ability to deliver thousands of visitors to your site each week. All you have to do is use them correctly.</p>
<p>The reason social media sites have become so popular for Internet marketers is because of the viral energy they create. Have you ever gone into YouTube and watched a video --- and then noticed that it has had over a million views? It is not uncommon. How does that happen?</p>
<p>Well, any time someone uploads a YouTube video onto their Facebook site and someone watches it, that is reported back to YouTube and listed as one view. If the video is entertaining and all of your friends turn around and paste it onto their Facebook pages, and then their friends see it and do the same thing --- well, you can see how quickly the effect can explode.</p>
<p>Imagine one viewer produces two; two produce four; four produce eight; eight produce sixteen, sixteen produce 32, ---- in a matter of no time you are in the hundreds of thousands! You do the math.</p>
<p>But what kind of videos get that kind of viral movement? Obviously they have to be videos that are funny, entertaining, newsworthy or shocking.</p>
<p>Now imagine you put together a little video about your dog training site using a Windows program. If the video is nothing but slides about how to train a dog, your video is not going to be passed around. But what if you have a video about teaching a dog to dive off a high drive --- and he does it! Do you think that might get passed around? How about a cute little puppy who refuses to give back his master's slipper and keeps running away and trying to hide it? Videos like that can be golden!</p>
<p>The same is true of Pinterest, although Pinterest features still photos more than videos (although you can load videos onto Pinterest). These pictures can be seen by millions of people. The viral effect comes when someone sees your picture (called a pin) and repins it to one of their boards. The viral effect can be astounding --- and each time the picture is repinned, a link to your site goes along with it!</p>
<p>Because most Pinterest users are women, the pins that get repinned the most deal with fashion, recipes, children and entertainers. Also high on the list are decorating tips. If you work in those niches, you can expect a lot of help from Pinterest. But even if you don't, if you can find one of those subjects and still have it relate to your niche, it work very well.</p>
<p>Using Pinterest and YouTube are great ways to get more traffic to your site. More traffic means more sales --- so don't overlook these two great resources.</p>
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<p></p> Does your Dealership use Facebook as Part of your Engagement Strategy?tag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2015-03-27:1970539:Topic:5809292015-03-27T13:26:31.190ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<p><span class="font-size-4">Then, here's an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/debunking-the-latest-predictions-of-facebooks-demise.html?_r=0" target="_blank">article</a> you might find interesting:</span><br></br><strong><span class="font-size-4">Debunking the Latest Predictions of Facebook’s Demise</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Every few years, a strange affliction breaks out in Silicon Valley. The disease, …</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-4">Then, here's an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/debunking-the-latest-predictions-of-facebooks-demise.html?_r=0" target="_blank">article</a> you might find interesting:</span><br/><strong><span class="font-size-4">Debunking the Latest Predictions of Facebook’s Demise</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Every few years, a strange affliction breaks out in Silicon Valley. The disease, </span><a title="More information about Facebook, Inc." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org" style="font-size: 12pt;">Facebook</a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Second Guessing Syndrome, has as its worst symptom an embarrassing tendency to predict an early peak for the fortunes of the world’s largest social network.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">To techies who laud Apple for its hardware and software design or Google for its data prowess, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More information about Facebook, Inc." class="meta-org">Facebook</a> has long looked a little frivolous and more than a tad faddish. The company’s genius is in bringing people together and persuading them to stick around, an unusual skill in Silicon Valley, and something Mark Zuckerberg’s company has done consistently for over a decade.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-2"><span class="font-size-3">That’s despite various potential threats to its dominance — the rise of alternative social networks, a shift from desktop computers to mobile phones and the perpetual technological fickleness of young people. Facebook has even managed to reap substantial profits from its operations, beating analysts’ expectations in every quarterly earnings report over the past two years. Its market valuation recently surpassed $230 billion, passing JPMorgan Chase and within striking distance of General Electric.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Yet the skepticism persists.</strong></span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">Now, as the company holds a developer conference this week in San Francisco, another theory arguing that Facebook’s success may be illusory has been making the rounds. This theory concerns the rapid sales growth in Facebook’s ads in its smartphone app, the most used app on the planet.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">The trouble, the theory goes, is that Facebook is increasingly depending on these ads, many of which are run by other start-ups hawking their own apps. For some industry observers and market analysts, Facebook’s reliance on money from other app companies looks like the making of an unsustainable monoculture — not a lasting business, but something spun up in the heady froth of a venture capital smoothie.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">“There are now a number of revenue streams that are being driven by venture dollars,” Bill Gurley, a prominent venture capitalist who has been warning of a tech bubble, <a title="A YouTube video." href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRpUl8KYVUk&amp;t=3314">said recently in an onstage interview</a> at <a title="More articles about SXSW." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/south_by_southwest_music_and_media_conference/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">South by Southwest</a> in Austin, Tex. “Facebook and </span>a little bit of<span class="font-size-3"> Twitter’s revenues are now coming heavily from mobile downloads. These are ads for, like,<a title="Related article." href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/11/21/that-kate-upton-tv-ad-for-game-of-war-targets-manly-man-shows-for-men/">Game of War with Kate Upton</a>. Those ads are now an increasing percentage of their revenue, and they’re being spent by these excessive venture dollars.”</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-3"><span class="font-size-3">The notion that Facebook and other social networks will suffer most deeply when the bubble bursts sounds plausible because <a title="Related article." href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-hiding-important-information-2014-9">it rehashes the last tech boom and bust</a>, when advertising revenue run-ups at huge web portals (remember those?) turned out to be funded mainly by venture capital investments. In 2001, revenue at Yahoo — the largest </span>portal,<span class="font-size-3"> and something like the Facebook of its time </span>—<span class="font-size-3"> plummeted by almost $400 million when start-ups stopped spending during the bust. Yahoo has never recovered its former glory. Could Facebook face the same fate?</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">Probably not — or not yet, at least. On closer inspection, the theory that Facebook’s growth depends on unsustainable venture capital is mostly overblown, another strain of Facebook Second Guessing Syndrome. It’s a story that misses important facts about Facebook’s advertising business. For one thing, as Facebook’s executives have repeatedly pointed out, ads from app companies make up a small percentage of the company’s overall business. Most of the social network’s revenue comes from video ads and ads for large brands.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-4"><span class="font-size-3">The theory also misses two other points. Not all these ads are coming from </span>unproved<span class="font-size-3"> start-ups. And the ads are set to be adopted more widely because they actually work.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-5"><span class="font-size-3">According to several app makers and observers of the industry, the ads are tremendously effective at leading paying customers to new apps. It’s the effort to reach these paying customers — and not venture funding — that is often the reason for all the money pouring into ads for apps.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">App-pushing ads are known in the industry as app-install ads. They appear in your Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream and encourage you to download apps from companies that make mobile games and e-commerce and travel services; they also come from big brands like Target and Chase. When you tap the ad, you are sent to Apple or Google’s app store. Facebook and Twitter are paid for each click according to prices set by an online bidding process.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">According to Cathy Boyle, an analyst at eMarketer, a research firm that studies the online advertising business, the market for app-install ads is growing rapidly. Ms. Boyle estimates that in the United States, app companies spent $1.67 billion on install ads in 2014. She expects that number to grow 80 percent this year, to about $3 billion. The market for app-install ads is growing faster than just about any other digital advertising category, Ms. Boyle said, but it is still relatively small. In 2015, these ads will account for about 10 percent of the American mobile ad market, according to eMarketer.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-6"><span class="font-size-3">Facebook and Twitter would not specify the proportion of their revenue from app ads, but both have described it as far from the majority of their business. “We talk about our mobile ad business growing — mobile app ads are a small part of that, growing in line with our total business,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, in a call with investors in October.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-7"><span class="font-size-3">One reason spending on these ads is growing is that the ads solve a problem faced both by businesses that make apps and by users who want apps: App stores are becoming ever more crowded, and it is increasingly difficult for new apps to find an audience. In this way, apps for ads on social networks perform the same function as the highly successful ads for websites that Google runs alongside its search results — they show people something that they might click on and pay for, based on a combination of users’ interests and a business’s willingness to pay.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">App ads are also like search ads in that they are highly measurable. Marketers can target specific types of customers whom they want to present with an ad for a certain app, and they can also track exactly how much money they make from customers they get through an app ad. By contrast, the advertising boom that doomed the portal industry was not built on measurable ads. Those were mostly web banner ads, whose effectiveness has always been <a title="Previous coverage in The Times." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/technology/personaltech/banner-ads-the-monsters-that-swallowed-the-web.html">something of a leap of faith</a>.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">Acquiring new customers through app ads is “100 percent based on data,” said Bernard Kim, senior vice president for social and mobile publishing at the video game developer Electronic Arts. “We have the ability to track the players that we get through these networks very carefully, and we know what the profitability looks like on a player, so these ads are a very effective tool for us to bring in the players that we want to engage with our titles.”</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-8"><span class="font-size-3">Skeptics remain. One tech investor who has been critical of these ads pointed out that start-ups are often very bad at calculating the long-term value of new customers. This miscalculation often causes them to overspend on marketing. Several recent venture-funded flops, including Groupon and Fab.com, were tripped up by huge marketing spending that did not lead to lucrative long-term customers.</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">If today’s money-burning, venture-funded app companies — Uber, </span>Lyft<span class="font-size-3">, Airbnb and many more — are also overestimating the value of new customers, could they wake up one day to find they’re spending too much on app ads?</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">Facebook does not think so. In an interview, Andrew Bosworth, the company’s vice president for advertising, argued that start-ups today were more disciplined than in the recent past, with many analyzing not just how much they’re spending to get new users but also whether those people are actually buying stuff. “That’s been the big shift. The big V.C.-backed<a href="http://fab.com/">Fab.com</a>s of the world spent on acquisition but couldn’t actually convert,” he said. But when today’s start-ups look at these ads, “They’re asking, ‘Can you put a dollar in and get two dollars out?’ If you can, you spend, and if you can’t, you don’t.”</span></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content"><span class="font-size-3">Sure, Mr. Bosworth’s argument is a variation of “this time is different,” which is the stock defense during every boom. But he added that Facebook wasn’t counting on app ads for its long-term survival. “I think this will be a stable ongoing market,” he said. “I think it will plateau at some point in terms of share, as smartphone growth plateaus. I don’t think it will shrink dramatically, but I just think there will come a point where it plateaus.”</span></p> Top 5 Social Marketing Trends for Brands to Watch in 2015tag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2014-11-01:1970539:Topic:5606932014-11-01T14:58:08.164ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<div class="article_heading"><h1><a href="http://www.clickz.com/author/profile/2712/roger-katz" rel="author" style="font-size: 13px;" title="Roger Katz"></a></h1>
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<div class="article_desc"><p><span class="font-size-3">As we near the end of 2014, here's a look at what social media marketing trends brands need to be on the lookout for in the coming year.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Depending on when you read this, there are about 60 days left in 2014. Here's what we're advising…</span></p>
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<div class="article_heading"><h1><a href="http://www.clickz.com/author/profile/2712/roger-katz" rel="author" title="Roger Katz" style="font-size: 13px;"></a></h1>
</div>
<div class="article_desc"><p><span class="font-size-3">As we near the end of 2014, here's a look at what social media marketing trends brands need to be on the lookout for in the coming year.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Depending on when you read this, there are about 60 days left in 2014. Here's what we're advising our client brands at <a href="http://www.friend2friend.com/">Friend2Friend</a> to be thinking about for their 2015 plans.</span></p>
<h3><span class="font-size-3">Trend 1: It's Increasingly a Mobile-First World</span></h3>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Not only is the age of the big smartphone here, but more people simply are spending more time on mobile. In the U.S., carriers' shelf-space for devices with 4.7-inch or larger screen displays increased from 4 percent to about a third in 2014 alone, matching a sales growth - larger-screen phones now account for more than one-quarter of all sales, according to <a href="https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/increased-sales-and-shelf-share-set-stage-for-dramatic-acceleration-of-large-screen-smartphone-market/">NPD Group</a>. </span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Millennials' smartphones <a href="http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Smartphone-Toting-Millennials-Fuel-Demand-Mobile-Optimized-Sites/1011361">never leave their side, day or night</a>. And Facebook's <a href="http://investor.fb.com/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=150867">most recent earnings report</a> this week showed that while overall daily active users grew 8 percent in 2014, mobile daily active users grew 15 percent and mobile-<strong>only </strong>daily active users grew 34 percent. Where Facebook leads, others follow. Expect the trend across the board on social.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What Social Marketers Should Do in 2015</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Switch thinking from mobile-aware to mobile-first.</strong> Don't just plan for campaigns and content that "scale down" nicely on mobile. Start with mobile and plan to "scale up" nicely on desktop/laptop. Plan for everyone to experience everything, from marketing emails through websites to social posts, on mobile exclusively.</span></p>
<h3><span class="font-size-3">Trend 2: It's Now a Pay-to-Play Social World</span></h3>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Forrester recently reported that brand interaction on organic Facebook posts is now <a href="http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/14-04-29-instagram_is_the_king_of_social_engagement">squeezed to 0.073 percent</a>. Social advertising spend continues to rise, though as a whole it still doesn't match time spent overall on social. Only on Facebook has spending outstripped <a href="http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Facebooks-US-Ad-Revenues-Outpace-Users-Average-Daily-Time-Spent-on-Site/1011215">time spent</a> - 6 percent of U.S. adults' digital media time is spent on Facebook, but 10 percent of U.S. digital ad spending is now assigned to Facebook. But that's because for most brands, Facebook means social. And Facebook's ad products continue to improve in sophistication. As other platforms get their ad products launched, spending there will increase, too. Again, where Facebook leads, others will follow.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What Social Marketers Should Do in 2015</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Ditch thinking about social as a free-place market. </strong>Invest in smart social advertising. Take the time needed to really dig deep on audience segmentation and targeting on advertising on the social platforms that are right for your brand. For some brands, that may be just Pinterest's new ad products. And if Instagram is a smart platform for your audience, take advantage of it now while the organic reach and engagement is high.</span></p>
<h3><span class="font-size-3">Trend 3: Social Content Continues as the Rising Marketing Star</span></h3>
<p><span class="font-size-3">It's not like using content to market came out of nowhere. It's always been there. But the topic of content marketing seemed to attract an inordinate amount of attention in 2014, not only with regard to efficacy, but also about how hard it is to produce quality content in quantity. Marketers have been challenged to produce content for more channels (social, websites, organic search, newsletters, press, paid search, and more), and have been challenged to make that content meaningful and informative. Content will continue to be a central directive for brand marketers on social.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What Social Marketers Should Do in 2015</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Continue to build content, but be smart about it. </strong>Be smart about how content can be leveraged and re-purposed. One expensively produced piece of content can be distributed in multiple ways to get more use - for B2B marketers, one white paper can be leveraged as infographics, charts, slides, videos and more, to squeeze value in more touch points. For consumer marketers, social audiences themselves can be a truly inspired source of content that is authentic and highly sharable, when commissioned, moderated and presented in a creative way.</span></p>
<h3><span class="font-size-3">Trend 4: Video Isn't Just About YouTube Any More</span></h3>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Even fairly recently, brands felt it was sufficient to take a TV commercial, put it on YouTube, and consider video marketing as job done. Not anymore. There is increasing interaction with video in places outside YouTube, particularly with short form video on Twitter's Vine channel, as well as even shorter form GIFs on Tumblr. Yes, there was quite a hue and cry when <a href="http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/09/the-latest-on-facebook-video/">Facebook announced</a> that they had more video views than YouTube of this year, with many people scoffing that it was because of auto-play, not because of a video watching revolution. But let's not miss the trend. Facebook is now challenging YouTube as a video destination. And no doubt Facebook wants to attract the YouTube video celebrities that command such incredible follower interaction.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What Social Marketers Should Do in 2015</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Look at how video can play in all your marketing channels. </strong>Face the fear is that video production is expensive and difficult, and look for more creative ways to produce content. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-vine-commercial-2014-8">Look at how HP solicited video stars</a> to produce short-form Vine videos with great success. </span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">And so often, authentic trumps polished and professional - <a href="http://fiatusa.tumblr.com/?ism=CRHJun0614youtube1/">look at Fiat's "endless fun" GIFs on Tumblr</a>.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Content on social is about being conversational. About being the human face of a brand. And about being trustworthy and authentic. Particularly for B2B brands, content can help build the trust relationship that helps consumers believe you're there to educate and inform before you're there to sell.</span></p>
<h3><span class="font-size-3">Trend 5: The Social Splinternet Will Continue</span></h3>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook is still the biggest, most dominant social game in town and the "lowest common denominator" of social marketing. But it's not the only game. Social audiences will continue splintering. This social diversity represents a serious challenge for brand marketers - particularly for brands seeking the youth market - who are looking to find the right voice for their audiences in the right location. In 2015 the social imperative will remain to hit the right voice on the right social platform - which may not be Facebook at all.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What Social Marketers Should Do in 2015</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Be informed about where your audiences spend time.</strong> Dig deeper into customization and personalization strategies on social channels that are working best for your audiences.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2378721/top-5-social-marketing-trends-for-brands-to-watch-in-2015?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClickZExperts+%28ClickZ+-+Columns%29" target="_blank">Original Article</a></span></p>
</div> RIP Facebook – February 4, 2004 to February 11, 2016tag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2014-09-12:1970539:Topic:5559772014-09-12T13:54:15.915ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<p><span class="font-size-3">MENLO PARK, Calif., February 11, 2016 – Facebook, the first major social-media network, which gained more than a billion users worldwide and revolutionized interpersonal communications forever, died today after suffering a long illness of user dissatisfaction. It was 12.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook is survived by its father, Mark Zuckerberg; stepmother, Priscilla Chan; uncles, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Sean Parker; adopted siblings,…</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">MENLO PARK, Calif., February 11, 2016 – Facebook, the first major social-media network, which gained more than a billion users worldwide and revolutionized interpersonal communications forever, died today after suffering a long illness of user dissatisfaction. It was 12.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook is survived by its father, Mark Zuckerberg; stepmother, Priscilla Chan; uncles, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Sean Parker; adopted siblings, Instagram and WhatsApp; benefactors including Peter Thiel and Accel Partners; and numerous children in the form of niche, private social networks.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">A memorial service will be simultaneously broadcast at 3 p.m. GMT tomorrow on Google+ and YouTube as well as on major television networks throughout the world. Burial will be under the statue of John Harvard on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss will officiate.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">---</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook’s dramatic life story involved stealth entrepreneurship, startup growth, company expansion, societal disruption, and wealth creation before <a href="http://www.theclinegroup.com/2014/01/30/facebook-past-present-future/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">falling victim to its own success later and turning off its users in attempts to make even more money</a>.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">But it all began as just a way for friends to keep in touch. Here were the overlapping phases of the life of the social-media giant. (For more details on the pivotal events in Facebook’s life that I mention below, I will <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Facebook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">refer you to Wikipedia</a>.)</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Phase One: The College Network (2004 to 2005)</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">After spending a month writing Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg launched the social network on February 4, 2004 as a Harvard-only social network. It was merely a way for students to meet, connect, and interact with each other. Over the next two months, Facebook expanded to eight other major universities and was incorporated into a company founded by Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In June, Facebook moved to Palo Alto, California, incorporated into a new company with Sean Parker as president, and received its first capital investment – $500,000 from Peter Thiel. In December 2004, Facebook gained its one-millionth user before expanding to colleges throughout the world in early 2005.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Phase Two: Expanding Into New Markets (2005 to 2007)</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $13 million into Facebook to fuel its ever-increasing growth. In September of that year, the social network launched a high-school version – allowing teenagers to connect with each other just as college students had been doing.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In September of that year, Facebook unveiled the News Feed, an algorithm that shows a stream of updates from a person’s “friends” on the network, and, most significantly, opened itself to everyone in the world (as long as they were at least thirteen years of age and had a valid e-mail address).</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">The significance of this move was that Facebook was now a way for everyone to keep in touch with friends and family – regardless of whether a person was at a school or university. It was a pivotal move that made the social network the center of communication between people.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Phase Three: The First Attempt at Monetization (2007 to 2009)</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In October 2007, Microsoft bought a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. Rumors of buyouts had been circulating for some time, and other social networks such as Twitter had arrived on the digital scene. Facebook then started to change its focus from simply being an innovative communications platform to finding a way to monetize and make a profit.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In November 2007, Facebook started to offer advertising for the first time with the launch of Facebook Beacon. Data from forty-four partner sites (at the beginning) would be sent to Facebook in the form of targeted advertisements and more based on a user’s activity on one of those sites. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Data_mining" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This use of personal data</a> was the beginning of what many would see as a growing infringement on personal privacy.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">The push for advertising – something that had never existed on the network before – undoubtedly worried more than a few employees who had owned stock options likely because they thought the push to make money would eventually turn users off. (The employees were correct – it would just take longer than they had thought.) In August 2008, several of them sold their shares to venture-capital firms.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook Beacon was closed in September 2009 – but other forms of advertising that would allegedly be “better” would come soon.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Phase Four: Page Payments and Competition (2010 to 2013)</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In April 2010, Facebook created “community pages,” which were articles that were populated with information from Wikipedia. This change soon paved the way for businesses, brands, and organizations to create their own “pages” – as opposed to the “profiles” for individual people – to market themselves on the network.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">After Facebook pages became very popular as a way for businesses to promote themselves – at first – for free, the network unveiled “featured posts” in January 2012 as a way for them to advertise to the friends of people who had engaged with their pages. Facebook would <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10268260/Facebook-to-pay-out-20m-in-sponsored-stories-lawsuit.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">eventually settle a lawsuit</a> on these renamed “sponsored posts” for $20 million. Moreover, Facebook would start to become the target of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Advertising" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">accusations of “click fraud” and “like fraud.”</a></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In October 2010, the film “The Social Network” was released to tell the story of how Facebook was created, and its unflattering portrayal of Zuckerberg would haunt the network for the rest of its life after people realized the founder’s alleged business practices.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Along with the notoriety came the competition. Google, noting the success of Facebook, created Google+ -- which many viewed as the search engine’s answer to Facebook. Even though Google+ has remained a smaller network – but it is huge in certain niches – its users have liked the fact that everyone’s friends and family members are not there and that people are not bombarded with advertisements. (Besides, Google+ is <a href="http://www.theclinegroup.com/2014/03/07/integration-of-seo-content-social-pr/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">actually much more than a social network</a>.)</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">The rise of other networks would come largely as methods to capitalize on the growing dissatisfaction that many people had with Facebook.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Phase Five: IPO AND Acquisitions (2012 to 2014)</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">By April 2012, Facebook saw that it had a major problem – teenagers, whose reputation as early adopters led them to be viewed as an important demographic, had started to abandon the platform. After Facebook had allowed anyone and everyone onto the social network, high-school students started to get “friend requests” from their parents and other family members.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Understandably, they were horrified and started to gravitate towards other competing networks such as Instagram. So, that month, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Despite the warning signs, Facebook went public. In May 2012, Facebook’s IPO opened at $38 dollars per share – valuing the company at $104 billion. More financial activity followed. Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion but was not successful. The social network did buy WhatsApp for $19 billion.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Phase Six: Abandonment and Decline (2014 to 2016)</strong></span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">Facebook’s ability to capture and use personal data only improved – much to the horror of users who had attempted to ignore <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Lawsuits_over_privacy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">what everyone knew the social network was doing</a>.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In March 2014, Facebook’s face-recognition algorithm – which had been <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20070148-93/facebook-facial-recognition-prompts-eu-privacy-probe/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the focus of legal controversy</a> since 2011 – became as accurate as human beings. By 2015, people saw that ads were targeting them based on the images in which they had appeared – even if they had not been tagged and had asked “friends” to delete undesired photos of them. There was no way to delete the information that Facebook had stored.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">By the middle of 2015, Facebook faced a serious revenue problem. User growth in developed countries – where the social network can charge a premium for advertisers – started to decline as a result of all of these ongoing concerns while the only increased usage was in developing countries in which people have little money to spend on advertising.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">As a result, Facebook began a death-spiral. To keep maximizing revenue and profits in the developed world, Facebook increased its ad penetration. Up to 25% of the News Feed was sponsored content. Facebook began sending push notifications several times per day from advertisers via its mobile app. Outraged users began deleting their accounts. The user growth in the Third World was nowhere near enough to compensate. Revenue plummeted along with Facebook’s share price.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">In December 2015 -- exactly eleven years after the network had gained its millionth user – Facebook issued a press release stating that the network would close on February 11, 2016, but that the company would <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Terms_of_Use_controversy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">retain the rights</a> to any original content, posts, graphics, and video that had ever first been published on the platform.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">The news release closed with this announcement: “We look forward to exploring how to monetize Instagram and WhatsApp just as Facebook did successfully.”</span></p>
<p><em>For his more extensive analysis, please see Josh Kline's essay on the </em><a href="http://www.theclinegroup.com/2014/01/30/facebook-past-present-future/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><em>past, present, and future of Facebook</em></a><em> at The Cline Group.</em></p> 15 Twitter Hacks That Will Turn You Into a Twitter Ninjatag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2014-08-12:1970539:Topic:5527822014-08-12T21:11:04.265ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<div class="tb"><p>Admit it. Sometimes, your Twitter life is messy. You follow hundreds of people — maybe thousands. Staring at your timeline is about as intelligible as reading a stock ticker.</p>
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<div class="xg_module_body"><div class="discussion"><div class="description"><div class="xg_user_generated"><div class="entry-content"><p>How do you bring …</p>
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<div class="tb"><p>Admit it. Sometimes, your Twitter life is messy. You follow hundreds of people — maybe thousands. Staring at your timeline is about as intelligible as reading a stock ticker.</p>
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<div class="xg_module_body"><div class="discussion"><div class="description"><div class="xg_user_generated"><div class="entry-content"><p>How do you bring <a rel="nofollow" title="Twitter Tips for Beginners: Everything I Wish I Knew About Twitter When I Started" href="http://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-tips-for-beginners">organization to your Twitter life</a>? How do you rise above the confusion, cut through the complexity, and become <a rel="nofollow" title="The Twitter Strategy Guide: 14 Twitter Tips to Take Your Tweeting to the Next Level" href="http://blog.bufferapp.com/advanced-twitter-tips">a superstar on Twitter</a>?</p>
<p>You learn these 15 Twitter hacks.</p>
<p>Once you pick up on these power user features, you’ll become a Twitter ninja in no time.</p>
<p></p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>1. Create a follow list.</strong></span></p>
<p>Want to turn your Twitter feed into a streamlined and swift way of accessing only the information you want? This hack is for you.</p>
<p>Create a follow list.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/76460-using-twitter-lists">According to Twitter</a>, “A list is a curated group of Twitter users. You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others. Viewing a list timeline will show you a stream of Tweets from only the users on that list.”</p>
<p>Click on your profile → “More” → “Lists.” Or, just type in “g” and “l.” Then click “Create new list.”</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/create-list.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9330" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/create-list.png" alt="create-list" width="483" height="292"/></a></p>
<p>Type in a name for your list and a brief description. Set the privacy settings, save the list, and you’re done.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/create-list-2.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9327" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/create-list-2.png" alt="create-list-2" width="963" height="710"/></a></p>
<p>To survey your newly-minted list feed, go to your profile page and click on “Lists.”</p>
<p>Add Twitter users to your list by clicking on the gear icon next to the Follow button on any user’s account. You don’t have to be following the user to add them to a list.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/twitter-add-to-list.png"><img class="alignnone wp-image-9521" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/twitter-add-to-list.png" alt="twitter-add-to-list" width="315" height="420"/></a></p>
<p>Choose “Add or remove from lists…” and check the list you want. Done!</p>
<h2>2. Find out what lists you’re on</h2>
<p>To gauge your popularity level, you can find out what public lists you’ve been added to. From your lists page, click on “Member of.”</p>
<p>Knowing what lists you’re on gives you an idea of how you’re perceived on Twitter. Are you in a lot of “SEO” lists or “digital marketer” lists?</p>
<h2>3. Use hashtags</h2>
<p>The more you use hashtags, the more engagement you’ll get on your tweets. Tweets with hashtags are proven to double engagement rate, grow more followers, improve reputation, and gain information.</p>
<p>Check out my <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/04/how-to-use-hashtags-to-increase-your-online-presence/">infographic on the power of hashtags</a>.</p>
<h2>4. Tweet between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. EST, Monday through Thursday</h2>
<p>The <a rel="nofollow" href="http://blog.bitly.com/post/22663850994/time-is-on-your-side">best tweet times</a> are on weekdays between 9am and 3pm EST. Forget Friday.</p>
<h2>5. Use search operators</h2>
<p>Twitter’s search bar looks humble and unassuming, yet it possesses an incredible amount of power. You can unleash this power using Search Operators.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/search-operators.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9328" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/search-operators.png" alt="search-operators" width="753" height="729"/></a></p>
<h2>6. Use Advanced Search</h2>
<p>Twitter’s advanced search is just that — advanced. With the exabytes of information being churned out by tweeters every day, there is a ton of great information available for the searching.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/search-advanced">Advanced Search</a> is the way to find it.</p>
<p>If you’re not yet adept at using the amazing buffet of search operators, you can use advanced search to stitch together a precise and targeted search.</p>
<p>Here are some of the features of Advanced Search:</p>
<ul>
<li>Search based on a set of given words</li>
<li>Search for an exact phrase</li>
<li>Search for any of several given words</li>
<li>Search for something that contains none of the given words</li>
<li>Search hashtags</li>
<li>Search based on any of Twitter’s dozens of supported languages</li>
<li>Search for people from certain accounts</li>
<li>Search for people tweeting to certain accounts</li>
<li>Search for people mentioning certain accounts</li>
<li>Search for tweets sent near a specified location</li>
<li>Search for tweets occurring within a certain date frame</li>
<li>Search for positive tweets</li>
<li>Search for negative tweets</li>
<li>Search for questioning tweets – ?</li>
<li>Search for retweets</li>
<li>Search for any combination of all those things</li>
</ul>
<p>I think you’ll agree that’s quite the level of complexity. Let your ninja searches begin.</p>
<h2>7. See what has access</h2>
<p>As you integrate your Twitter life with all the other aspects of your online life, there may be tons of apps that have access to your account.</p>
<p>Now and then, it helps to check out what applications are accessing your Twitter account. From your profile settings, go to “Apps.”</p>
<p>You may want to clean some stuff up by clicking “revoke access.”</p>
<h2>8. Put hashtags in your bio</h2>
<p>If you put hashtags in your bio, people will be able to find you better when they perform searches.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hashtags.png"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-9331" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/hashtags-1024x193.png" alt="hashtags" width="1024" height="193"/></a></p>
<h2>9. Eliminate emails</h2>
<p>Don’t like getting tons of emails from Twitter? Turn them all off with a single click.</p>
<p>Go to your profile, then email notifications. Look for the “turn off” button at the top.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/notifications.png"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-9326" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/notifications-1024x234.png" alt="twitter-email-notifications" width="1024" height="234"/></a></p>
<h2>10. Be a Twitter texter</h2>
<p>You love Twitter. You’ll love texting using Twitter. Just go to your mobile tab, and turn on Twitter text messaging.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Twitter-text.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9324" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Twitter-text.png" alt="Twitter-text-messaging" width="744" height="483"/></a></p>
<h2>11. Tell Twitter to get some sleep</h2>
<p>If you are an inveterate tweeter and losing precious shut-eye because of your addiction, it’s time to impose some limits.</p>
<p>Click on “mobile.” Assuming you’ve added your phone, select the times that you ought to be sleeping, and keep twitter shushed up through the night.</p>
<h2>12. Catalog your life’s tweet record</h2>
<p>Are you into personal improvement, life tracking, and writing your own bio?</p>
<p>Twitter has a hack for that. Click the gear icon, then “Settings.” Go to the bottom and click “Request your archive.” You’ll get an email when it’s ready.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitter-archive.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9325" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitter-archive.png" alt="twitter-archive" width="729" height="403"/></a></p>
<h2>13. Subscribe to public lists</h2>
<p>To join someone else’s public list, go to their profile and click “lists.” Choose what list of theirs you’d like to subscribe to, and click “Subscribe.” Joining lists does two sweet things:</p>
<ul>
<li>Gives you awesome theme-specific feed information</li>
<li>Gets you exposure, especially if you’re wanting more visibility by the radar of list owners and participants.</li>
</ul>
<p>Hint: You can follow a user’s public list without even following that user.</p>
<h2>14. Train your #discover</h2>
<p>The Twitter algorithm is sick. If you haven’t tried out #Discover, you need to do it now.</p>
<p>Clicking #Discover gives you an algorithmically-curated list of tweets that you should see, but that don’t appear in your ordinary feed. Based on follows, mentions, interactions, favorites, and retweets, #Discover gives you a list of the best of Twitter at that very moment.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitter-discover1.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9333" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitter-discover1.png" alt="twitter-discover" width="726" height="103"/></a></p>
<p>It’s almost like it reads your mind.</p>
<h2>15. Use Twitter keyboard shortcuts, ninja style</h2>
<p>Type ? in Twitter, and view all the most important keyboard shortcuts. Here’s what you’ll see.</p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitter-keyboard-shortcuts.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9323" src="https://blog.bufferapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitter-keyboard-shortcuts.png" alt="twitter-keyboard-shortcuts" width="611" height="522"/></a></p>
<p>G stands for go. Most keyboard shortcuts use “g” plus another key. Here’s your comprehensive list of Twitter keyboard shortcuts:</p>
<ul>
<li>Go home – gh</li>
<li>n – new tweet</li>
<li>f – favorite</li>
<li>r – reply</li>
<li> t – rewteet</li>
<li>m – direct message</li>
<li>u – mute user</li>
<li>b – block user</li>
<li>enter – open tweet details</li>
<li>| – close all open tweets</li>
<li>/ – search</li>
<li>CMD + enter = send tweet</li>
<li> j – go to next tweet</li>
<li>escape – close out a compose window or help window</li>
<li>k – go to previous tweet</li>
<li>space – page down (browser default)</li>
<li>shift + space – page up (browser default)</li>
<li>. – load new tweets</li>
<li>g then n – notifications</li>
<li>g then a – activity</li>
<li>g then r – mentions</li>
<li>g then d – discover</li>
<li>g then p – profile</li>
<li>g then f – favorites</li>
<li>g then l – lists</li>
<li>g then m – messages</li>
<li>g then s – settings</li>
<li>g then u – go to user…</li>
</ul>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Learning Twitter is like anything else in life. The more you use it, and the more you learn, the better you’ll get. These hacks will help get you there faster.</p>
<p>What other expert Twitter tips can you share?</p>
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<div class="dd_button"><span class="font-size-3"><strong><a rel="nofollow" href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-hacks" target="_blank">Article written by Neil Patel and Published on Buffer Social</a><br/></strong></span></div>
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</div> Why Your Dealership Shouldn't Buy Facebook Likestag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2014-07-30:1970539:Topic:5513742014-07-30T17:02:22.120ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<p>"Should I buy Facebook likes to boost my presence?" We get this question WAY more often than we should. When talking to people around the office, we thought the answer was a no-brainer – NEVER buy fans. Unfortunately, we've seen far too many pages do just that. After a lot of reading, talking to some influential social media professionals, and using a little of our own common sense, we've answered the question.</p>
<p>Below is a conversation that we sometimes have with clients, and one we…</p>
<p>"Should I buy Facebook likes to boost my presence?" We get this question WAY more often than we should. When talking to people around the office, we thought the answer was a no-brainer – NEVER buy fans. Unfortunately, we've seen far too many pages do just that. After a lot of reading, talking to some influential social media professionals, and using a little of our own common sense, we've answered the question.</p>
<p>Below is a conversation that we sometimes have with clients, and one we wish we had with others before they made the decision to buy likes.</p>
<p><strong>I really want my Facebook page to look popular, and I’ve been thinking of buying Facebook likes. Is that OK?</strong> In a world where the amount of “Likes” a company has seems to reign supreme, it’s very tempting to get sucked into the vortex of wanting more likes than all of your competitors. However, when it comes to businesses or an organization, you want the people who like your page to be true supporters of your cause, product or company.</p>
<p><strong>But all of those people will help me build my business, right?</strong> Wrong. When you purchase Facebook likes, all of this support and engagement goes out the window. These purchased likes are either a mixed bag of random people being paid by a company, or fake accounts altogether. Either way, those people do not truly value your company or organization. The likes you get are from spam accounts, which violates Facebook’s user policy. (This means they can get banned and deleted.) These "click farms" have generated a large profit, but it's not a business you or I want to be in. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/05/selling-social-media-clicks-becomes-big-business/4327905/" target="_blank">David Burch, at TubeMogul, a video marketing firm based in Emeryvil...</a></p>
<p><strong>Wow! This sounds like a bad idea. Tell me more!</strong> Facebook developed an algorithm (or really a group of algorithms) which determines how often your posts appear in your fans’ Newsfeeds. And it punishes you if your content is lacking. When you buy Facebook likes, the percentage of people who engage with your content (which is likely not even everyone who organically liked your page) will shrink.</p>
<p><strong>Let's do the math:</strong></p>
<p>You have 200 organic fans of your page. Let's say 25% of them engage with your content on a regular basis, that's 50 fans.</p>
<p>You buy 1000 fans (now a total of 1,200). If those 50 fans are still engaging with you, Facebook sees that only a meager 4.2% of your fanbase is engaging with your content. This tells the algorithm that you aren't producing valuable content, and you will appear in your fans' Newsfeeds even less often.</p>
<p>So what happened to those 200 organic fans that loved your brand? They're still there, but they aren't seeing your posts, and one of your competitors may have caught their eye in the meantime. (Psst...<a rel="nofollow" href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/the-filtered-feed-problem/" target="_blank">Facebook has declined organic reach by 50% in the last year and rum...</a> Don't hurt yourself even more by purchasing likes.)</p>
<p><strong>Am I just stuck at (insert current number of likes here) for the rest of my life?</strong> Of course not! There are many more effective (and ethical) ways to increase the number of fans on your page. (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://jpmktg.com/2014/05/get-likes-facebook-marketing-101/" target="_blank">Read this Facebook Marketing blog for more advice!</a>) <strong>What do some of the biggest names in social media have to say?</strong> You don’t have to take our word for it. Our <a rel="nofollow" href="http://jpmktg.com/employee/anna-gonzalez/" target="_blank">Outreach &amp; New Media Manager</a> took to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.twitter.com/annamarie9289" target="_blank">Twitter</a> to ask some of the biggest names in social media what they thought about the topic. Read the passionate, and strikingly similar responses below:</p>
<p>&lt;The original article has Screen shots of Twitter responses. <strong>See them <a rel="nofollow" href="http://socialmediopolis.com/socialtrax-blog/2774-why-you-shouldn-t-buy-facebook-likes" target="_blank">HERE</a></strong>&gt;</p>
<p>What have we learned from all of this? Don't buy fans! Not just on Facebook, don't buy fans/followers on any social media platform. And if anyone tells you that they want to buy you likes... run.<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pammarketingnut.com/" target="_blank"></a></p>
<p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pammarketingnut.com/" target="_blank">Pam Moore</a>, a Forbes.com Top 10 Social Media Influencers and chart topper on string of other impressive lists, told us to not waste our time. She tweeted to us saying, "Focus on ppl who understand real value &amp; work required for social biz." With a consistent and effective content strategy, your fans WILL come. And you will look more authentic, earn an audience that believes in your brand, and have higher conversion rates in the long run.</p>
<p>If you're still not convinced, let me ask you one final question: Can fake likes purchase your product? (Hint: The answer is no.)</p>
<p>Anna Gonzalez' Article Published on SocialMediopolis.com</p> How to Respond to Commentstag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2014-07-25:1970539:Topic:5506762014-07-25T16:22:14.902ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<p>(An article from Auto Dealer Monthly that I wanted to share with all of you)</p>
<p><a href="http://api.ning.com:80/files/mrjGDDFzeeFiglPJbV7fYzHgM28KSqUpJLdrNTTllaRdt0Gu-CG4QCcx5unHqfs2ik4YTDGW6jVdsRVr6Pd56kdUmwLlZg9l/MiS18458189LADM.jpg" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://api.ning.com:80/files/mrjGDDFzeeFiglPJbV7fYzHgM28KSqUpJLdrNTTllaRdt0Gu-CG4QCcx5unHqfs2ik4YTDGW6jVdsRVr6Pd56kdUmwLlZg9l/MiS18458189LADM.jpg" width="480"></img></a></p>
<p>There are endless social media and third-party review sites on which car buyers can post both negative and positive feedback about their dealership experience. Many dealers have responded by instructing their sales…</p>
<p>(An article from Auto Dealer Monthly that I wanted to share with all of you)</p>
<p><a href="http://api.ning.com:80/files/mrjGDDFzeeFiglPJbV7fYzHgM28KSqUpJLdrNTTllaRdt0Gu-CG4QCcx5unHqfs2ik4YTDGW6jVdsRVr6Pd56kdUmwLlZg9l/MiS18458189LADM.jpg" target="_self"><img src="http://api.ning.com:80/files/mrjGDDFzeeFiglPJbV7fYzHgM28KSqUpJLdrNTTllaRdt0Gu-CG4QCcx5unHqfs2ik4YTDGW6jVdsRVr6Pd56kdUmwLlZg9l/MiS18458189LADM.jpg" width="480" class="align-full"/></a></p>
<p>There are endless social media and third-party review sites on which car buyers can post both negative and positive feedback about their dealership experience. Many dealers have responded by instructing their sales teams to encourage satisfied customers to submit reviews on sites such as DealerRater.com. Any kind of feedback is helpful, and a high score on review sites can be good for business. Unfortunately, this is not always an effective strategy.</p>
<p>The value of a strong presence on third-party sites is diminished by the fact that many of them leave business owners with little or no opportunity to respond to ­comments. In many cases, dealers would benefit from continuing the conversation with unsatisfied customers before, during or after a sale is made or service is ­performed.</p>
<p>With that in mind, let’s look at three platforms on which dealers can see a return on their investment of time and energy in promoting and maintaining a positive online profile.</p>
<p><span class="pinContainer"><img alt="&lt;p&gt;When customers write vehicle reviews, they create content that helps drive search returns. The more reviews you collect, the greater chance your website has to become a point of reference for shoppers at the early stages of the buying process.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;" src="http://www.fi-magazine.com/dm_images/articles/M-ADM0714-OnlineMarketing-ratings-1.jpg" border="0" class="pinable"/></span><strong>Your Website</strong><br/>When it comes to your own website, I suggest you adopt this mantra: Be the change, don’t wait for it.</p>
<p>We should be pushing the envelope for what we as an industry are asking our website providers to do for us. You know that SEO and content development are key elements to your online marketing strategy, but you may not realize how much of that work your customers can do for you.</p>
<p>Their testimonials and vehicle reviews can improve your search returns and encourage potential new customers to take a longer look at your offerings.</p>
<p>And the value is not limited to helping make a positive impression on potential customers. By reviewing their new vehicle as well as their dealership experience, customers add SEO stock and, ultimately, establish your site as a point of reference for product information. You can become a resource to customers who are still at the top of the sales funnel. Forward-thinking dealers do it every day.</p>
<p><span class="pinContainer"><img alt="&lt;p&gt;More than two-thirds of Internet searches are performed on Google, and Google Reviews are instantly visible to potential customers. Better yet, they offer business owners the opportunity to respond.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;" src="http://www.fi-magazine.com/dm_images/articles/M-ADM0714-OnlineMarketing-Google-1.jpg" border="0" class="pinable"/></span>This is not a new concept, and it’s not limited to the automotive space. But a vehicle is a big investment, and it typically involves a lengthy interaction with multiple staff members. If the culmination of that experience is a sale — or even a friendly parting — there is no reason not to ask for a review. It should be a part of your follow-up, and like any other part of your sales process, that step must be taken every time, with every customer, to ensure success.</p>
<p><strong>Google</strong> <br/>Google is the reigning king of online search, and Google Reviews are built into the platform. More than two-thirds of all Internet searches are initiated on Google, so keeping an eye on these reviews is of singular importance. The good news is that, in online marketing terms, you will own a lot of real estate.</p>
<p>Your goal here is simple: Provide as much information as possible to each customer on the platform that will take them furthest. Google yourself and count the number of reviews your dealership has accumulated. What is your star rating? How many positive reviews would it take to move the needle?</p>
<p>The best practice here is to always respond to a review — and that goes for any social platform, not just Google. Often we overlook the fact that a customer had something nice to say, but both positive and negative reviews warrant a response. It is a quick way to show every customer that they matter. Every review is an opportunity to build a relationship.</p>
<p>Unlike many third-party review sites, verified business owners can respond to reviews posted on Google, which is another compelling reason to make it one of the platforms on which you should focus your efforts. Just remember that your comments will be just as visible as theirs. See the sidebar for basic rules that will help guide your responses.</p>
<p><span class="pinContainer"><img alt="&lt;p&gt;Tempting though it may be to delete negative comments posted on your dealership&#x2019;s Facebook page, the author advises dealers to craft appropriate responses and allow satisfied customers to come to the store&#x2019;s defense.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;" src="http://www.fi-magazine.com/dm_images/articles/M-ADM0714-OnlineMarketing-Facebook-bad-1.jpg" border="0" class="pinable"/></span><strong>Facebook</strong><br/>I recently met with a dealer who was hoping to improve his Facebook page. He mentioned that an unhappy customer would not stop posting negative comments. We investigated, and it soon became apparent that the dealer was unwittingly encouraging this behavior. How? Every time the customer posted a comment, someone at the dealership deleted it. There is no more effective way to guarantee a second negative comment than deleting the first.</p>
<p>I realize it is sometimes difficult to resist, especially when you feel a comment is unfounded. It can be hard enough to deal with a negative situation when the other party is typing away and displaying their dissatisfaction for all to read. But this is your opportunity to show both current and potential customers that your business takes complaints seriously. You must be willing to engage in a real conversation when something goes wrong — even if you don’t think it did. And more often than not, you will find that customers who had a great experience will come to your defense, helping to strengthen your relationship with them and showing potential future customers that yours is a company worth doing business with.</p>
<p><span class="pinContainer"><img src="http://www.fi-magazine.com/dm_images/articles/M-ADM0714-OnlineMarketing-Facebook-good-1.jpg" border="0" class="pinable"/></span>The ability to engage customers is only one of the many marketing tools that Facebook provides to business owners. After a customer or potential customer interacts with your page, you can increase your page reach. Their friends are exposed to your content, whether or not they post anything. If you are running any type of retargeting campaign, if they click through to your site, you can retarget customers while they’re still on Facebook and as they continue to explore the Web.</p>
<p>The Internet is filled with opportunities for customers to write reviews of your dealership, whether positive or negative. To cultivate an active social media profile, you or a dedicated team member should check review sites on a weekly basis. This is an easy way to ensure you are engaging with every client who took the time to provide feedback. With the proper strategy in place, you will help build relationships, foster positive “buzz” and help defray negative situations before they get out of control.</p>
<p><strong>5 Rules for Responding to Negative Reviews</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Keep your responses simple. </li>
<li>Always thank each reviewer for being a customer and for their feedback. </li>
<li>Express empathy for those who have experienced problems. </li>
<li>If neither you nor your staff did anything wrong, don’t apologize.</li>
<li>Provide a private channel to continue the conversation offline and, hopefully, reach a satisfactory conclusion.</li>
</ol>
<p>Samantha Cunningham is vice president of account services for Potratz Advertising, where she uses data generated by a wide range of online marketing campaigns to develop new strategies for dealers. <a target="_blank" href="mailto:SCunningham@AutoDealerMonthly">SCunningham@AutoDealerMonthly</a></p>
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<p>Follow <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/admmagazine">@admmagazine</a> on Twitter</p> The Social Media Fallacies That Are Hurting Your Businesstag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2014-07-22:1970539:Topic:5502052014-07-22T14:08:37.806ZMike Elliotthttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/MikeElliott
<p>Let’s face it, there are a few misconceptions about how to use social media. Some people think it’s useless, while others go hog wild with their posting strategies. In this blog post I will go over some of the misconceptions I’ve learned along the way of being a social media coordinator to achieve maximum satisfaction and maximum results from your social media campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Social Overload</strong></p>
<p>First and foremost, I can’t tell you how many marketers I’ve spoken with…</p>
<p>Let’s face it, there are a few misconceptions about how to use social media. Some people think it’s useless, while others go hog wild with their posting strategies. In this blog post I will go over some of the misconceptions I’ve learned along the way of being a social media coordinator to achieve maximum satisfaction and maximum results from your social media campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Social Overload</strong></p>
<p>First and foremost, I can’t tell you how many marketers I’ve spoken with that say more is better, and give audiences way too much information. Like any good relationship, leave a little room for mystery. I’m not saying don’t inform your audience, but you don’t need to be force feeding them 10 posts a day.</p>
<p>Try to limit your posts per network to two posts per day, and always remain aware that sometimes <em>less</em> is more – especially when it comes to your follower’s social feeds.</p>
<p><strong>Not Just For Kids</strong></p>
<p>Second, a lot of people think social media is only for young people. Sure, Facebook started out as a way for college students to connect, but look how far we’ve come!</p>
<p>We all know it’s weird getting a friend request from your mom on Facebook or Twitter, but in the advertising world it’s great your mom is using social media – businesses now have a gateway to connect and inform a whole new audience on a much more personal level than we ever could before.</p>
<p><strong>The Social Parrot </strong></p>
<p>Thirdly, and this might be the biggest mistake business’s can make on social media, is repeating your content on all your social networks. For example, when posting about a sale on Facebook and Twitter, use different copy for each post! This way your followers see a purpose in following you on <em>all</em> your networks and don’t get bored of one of your social outlets because the copy is the exact same on each medium.</p>
<p><strong>Impulsive Voice</strong></p>
<p>Lastly, whether your sharing content, a useful article or a photo, you should always remember to use your brand’s voice when using your brand’s social media accounts. This sounds obvious, but if you have a team managing and posting to your various social networks, it can be easy to forget your brand is being represented within every post, within every network. It is vital to attract new followers and maintain your existing fan base, and if your brand’s voice sounds disconnected or jumbled, you risk losing even your most loyal fans.</p>
<p>Sure, meme’s get likes, everyone knows that. Partly because some of them are really darn funny, but you can’t be posting a cat meme everyday if you’re a car dealership.</p>
<p>All the best,</p>
<p>Carly</p>
<p><em>Carly Cunningham is a Social Media Coordinator at Stream Companies, a <a href="http://www.streamcompanies.com/">Philadelphia area advertising agency</a>.</em></p> Facebook Cover photos, TRUTH.tag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2013-04-24:1970539:Topic:4712342013-04-24T15:02:54.718ZDarrah Ranerihttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/DarrahRaneri
<p>By no surprise, the policy for cover photos has changed, yet again. Months ago, Facebook banned users from applying any calls to action, contact information and any insinuation of price or purchase to their cover photo. The only guideline still sticking is the 20% rule; cover photos must include no more than 20% text.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>This is great news for businesses as it relates to branding.</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>If there is something important you wish to showcase about your…</p>
<p>By no surprise, the policy for cover photos has changed, yet again. Months ago, Facebook banned users from applying any calls to action, contact information and any insinuation of price or purchase to their cover photo. The only guideline still sticking is the 20% rule; cover photos must include no more than 20% text.</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>This is great news for businesses as it relates to branding.</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p>If there is something important you wish to showcase about your dealership, put it in the cover photo. More importantly, as you change your cover photo, the image is revealed in News Feed - which will give you the opportunity to share your cover photo with fans that haven't been to your Page in a while. Assuming the text only takes up 20%, you can:</p>
<ul>
<li>Inform fans about upcoming events</li>
<li>Use engaging calls to action such as "Download this ebook now!"</li>
<li>Include your website</li>
<li>Contact information (phone, email)</li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Admins should be aware of a few things:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>If your profile photo is unified with your cover photo, it will appear differently in the News Feed.</li>
<li>Guidelines for cover photo and ad images are consistent. </li>
<li>Facebook is testing cover photos as <a href="http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/03/08/facebook-tests-page-like-sponsored-stories-that-include-cover-photo/" target="_blank">Page-like stories and ads.</a></li>
</ul>
<p></p>
<p>Whether you work with social media strategy as a third-party or manage your dealership's Facebook Page, this change applies to you. After all, what's one more change in the social sphere anyway?!</p>
<p></p> Ignoring Your Customers in Social Media (Videos)tag:www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com,2013-03-17:1970539:Topic:4629822013-03-17T07:04:44.959ZJason Manninghttp://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profile/JasonManning
<p>By now, you should know that videos are some of the best forms of Communication in the Social Online World. I have a question though (I'm a straight shooter) Why do we create online videos and then leave the online customer hanging when they make comments and ask questions and live a couple miles from our dealers (they tell us so)? </p>
<p></p>
<p>I'll tell you why. The automotive industry still is not trained on videos, their power, their function for business, and their use for…</p>
<p>By now, you should know that videos are some of the best forms of Communication in the Social Online World. I have a question though (I'm a straight shooter) Why do we create online videos and then leave the online customer hanging when they make comments and ask questions and live a couple miles from our dealers (they tell us so)? </p>
<p></p>
<p>I'll tell you why. The automotive industry still is not trained on videos, their power, their function for business, and their use for upcoming generations. Take some of the most "professional" salesmen (in any facet of our industry) and you'll see that they leave their customers hanging in their video comments (pull up their videos and check them out). The other problem is that their videos don't even create a view, much less a response. It seems like we are still waiting around the email box or texting app on our phones, waiting to speak to someone (important?). Is this bothering anyone reading this yet? Do you think a customer that views your video will pick up their phone and call you or go to your site, then your email link etc, etc, etc? Is anyone really preparing for future generations? I am confident that many dealers, still, are heading towards the Grand Exit of the Automotive World with their social media practices. Most are creating bad habits instead of proper media. We brow beat our sales associates to "follow The Process," but we are not even close to the process for social media.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Many times, our customer is right there where we left them...standing in front of our social media...waiting for our response (a competitor can swoop in with a login/screen name and steal your customer, you know). They've already talked to us in the comments, but we ignore them. Many dealers have professional polished videos that scream "tv commercial" and will not even evoke a comment. I have always steered clear of creating these types of videos.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I'd like to offer some pointers that produce results for videos. To date, I have made 103 walkaround videos for three separate dealers. My total views are over 3,000,000 on those 103 videos (an average of 29,000 views per video). There are hundreds of comments. While I worked at those dealers, I responded to the comments. I have sold cars off YouTube because I stayed with the customer online. Are you staying with your customer like you did on the lot? Probably not. Some Basics haven't changed. <span style="color: #000000;"><strong>You have to stay with your customer</strong></span>. When you talked to your customer on the lot, did you talk like a polished tv commercial? Probably not. <strong>You have to shoot videos like you talk to your customers</strong>. You have to be down-to-earth. You have to offer Education, Information and be Entertaining (or Engaging on some level). <strong>Competition will change and you will have to offer more information in new videos, eventually</strong>. You have to start a new conversation. You have to defend your products (just like you did on the lot). You can't just rest on your laurels.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Just about everything can be seen online. Most of your customers will be Visual. For those that are Auditory, the videos work just as well when great information is shared. For those that are Kinesthetic, your customer will try to find an example/demonstration that they can relate to with another person in your videos. Then they will ask you for permission to talk to you in their comments. How embarrassing if you miss that moment. Yet, it has happened over and over again.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In any case, they are likely to comment if your video is up to par. Be sure to go back frequently and find your customers. They are following you and you are likely ignoring them if you're good at making videos and you haven't responded to the comments.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Just Do It Right,</p>
<p>Jason Manning</p>
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